Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/335006
34 CINEMONTAGE / JUL-AUG 14 and CSI: Miami. Sandra Angeline, who bounces back and forth from features to TV, began in reality TV/documentaries, and recently worked with veteran editor Mark Goldblatt, ACE, on Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. Sharon Smith Holley came from features, where she is a visual effects editor on over 50 films. When Smith Holley began working on The Fosters, she was struck by the number of women working on the show — both in post and in the director's chair. As one of few women in feature visual effects, she welcomed working alongside many other women. It is a sentiment shared by all, adding to the collaborative, enjoyable, all- in-the-family, let's-help-each-other-out ethos that pervades the workplace. Fittingly, this all adds up when working under deadline to get this groundbreaking, emotionally raw show through post-production. THE WORKFLOW In the Producers 4 building on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, assistant editors Robertson, Angeline and Smith Holley get the dailies directly from the DIT (digital imaging technician) and go to work consolidating them in order to log, sync, group and color the footage. Traditionally, the camera department turns the raw footage over to a lab, where it is synched and color-corrected. But in a departure from customary workflow, this process is now done in-house on The Fosters. "The DIT takes the raw camera and sound cards from the Alexa [camera] and the Deva [sound] and puts them on a drive," says Robertson, who has been working on the show since the middle of the first season. "The DIT will also include the LUTs [Look Up Tables]. I take the raw camera, raw sound and LUTs and import those into the Avid." Once the dailies are in the Avid, the first step is to consolidate and log the footage, and then apply a LUT to the clips. LUTs are color effects that are applied to temporarily get the color closer to what the DP intended, according to Robertson. This allows the editor to view the footage with a more natural look — rather than the flat, desaturated original camera image of the Arri Alexa. Robertson checks the script supervisor's notes to make sure that everything is complete, and then the LUTs are applied to color the clips. "This used to be a very time-consuming process, but since upgrading to Avid 7.0.3, which features a color-management tool, the process has become much more time-efficient," says Angeline, who also has been working on The Fosters since mid-Season 1. She remembers the days when the assistants had to go into the timeline and add color to each individual clip. "Now, instead of going in and doing a whole color correction, you can bring a LUT file from set and add it to all the clips at once," Angeline explains. "Let's say the director and DP have a color they like for a certain scene; they create a LUT file and give it to us with the dailies. They do the same The Fosters. ABC Family Sharon Silverman, left, and Meghan Robertson. CineMontage_Jul-Aug_14-4.indd 34 6/18/14 5:51 PM